Clay, I’ve been following the politics of judicial nominations since Reagan. What you honestly don’t seem to understand is that the majority in the Senate controls the calendar and the nominations. Period. Every single majority has used its power the same way.
What makes @JeffFlake absurd and destructive actions unique —if there is a precedent I am unaware of it— is that he is injuring not just nominees, families, clerks and families, secretaries and families etc, but his party and his state. Two 9th Circuit nominees among his hostages
Many disappointed nominees over the decades —Chief Justice Roberts was held up at end of 41 (never got vote)and beginning of 43 for more than a year b/c of D majority and then Leah/Reid filibusters. All part of the power of the majority in the Senate.
(And of the supermajority until Reid ended filibuster on nominations.) But @JeffFlake’s vanity and indifference to these nominees is unique b/c not only is a stunt for a doomed bill, it is injuring scores of people by a fellow who fashions himself “conscience of conservatism.”
